Most of your replies in here have little or nothing to do with
reality. We can take this offline if you wish, but
the nonsense you are sprouting is rather - surprising.
I think you are more than a little confused.
Tell you what, I will show you mainframes, you are welcome to show me
your idea of comparable Dell machines.
I do not believe they exist.
The closest thing to what you are talking about in the Intel world are
the Unisys ClearPath machines.
-Paul
On Mar 5, 2009, at 12:02 PM, Peter M. Eggers wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Paul Raulerson
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> But Linux is HORRIBLY inefficient compared to operating systems
> written for the native platform. A typical operation, such as a
> fprintf() will run though hundreds or thousands of instructions,
> while under say, z/VM, it will run though 10's. Or less.
>
> A formatted print operation has a few orders of magnitude of range
> in the number of instructions depending on the formatting operations
> and data being formatted, no matter what operation system. Then you
> say that z/VM uses 10's or less? Do you know that z/VM is not an
> operating system? Or, did you mistype and meant z/OS? Either way,
> your argument is just plain silly.
>
> Note that these OS's are pretty much all written in hand crafted
> assembler, which is in large part why they work so efficiently. And
> mainframes do I/O really well. They ain't called "Data Centers In A
> Box" for no reason.
>
> Much depends on who is doing the "hand crafted assembler", and
> though most of Linux is in C, much of the really critical code is
> optimized with inline "hand crafted assembler" for each CPU
> architecture supported (which is just about every commercially
> produced one).
>
> Mainframes do I/O really well due to hardware. I thought this was
> fairly common knowledge.
>
> The reason someone might refer to a mainframe as a "Data Centers In
> A Box" is because they are able to run hundreds or even thousands of
> virtual servers at once in a single box. But, the phrase is used by
> ComputerWorld (http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9023178&intsrc=news_ts_head
> ), Scientific American (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=data-center-in-a-box
> ), and System Management News (http://www.sysmannews.com/HARD_TO_CONTAIN_ENTHUSIASM_FOR_DATA_CENTERS_IN_A_BOX/By_John_Rath/15th_of_July_2008/About_DATACENTERS_and_IBM_and_RACKABLE_and_SUN_and_VERARI/32521
> ) to refer to modular data centers in a shipping container (box)
> with Sun being the first to create such a product using racked
> servers, not mainframes. IBM's own entry into the "Data Centers In
> A Box" market has to do with cutting emissions and energy
> consumption (Tech World: https://www.techworld.com.au/article/263809/data_centers_box?img=11010&ssid=1&fp=4&fpid=248)
> , and is described by IBM in a redbook here: http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/redp4413.html
>
> By the way, Linux is darn near ubiquitous on mainframes these days. :)
>
> You think there might be a correlation between the arrival of Linux
> on the mainframe and the mainframe's revival?
>
> Peter - you will find my name in some of the Unix kernel code for BSD.
>
> Some kernel contributors correct spelling errors, some design
> general scheduling algorthyms for multi-purpose work loads; some
> fix an iteration count by 1, some write video drivers. Where do you
> fall in the spectrum? As in what did you write and can you cite the
> source code or patch with your name on it.
>
> I know how efficient Unix and Linux can be.
> Very efficient indeed.
>
> Now you think Linux is very efficient?!
>
> But, you may not know how efficient mainframes are. They are very
> much like HP3K's - only much more so.
>
> Typically, a small mainframe, one priced in the same range as a
> largish HP3K, can easily support 10K users or more.
>
> That has far more to do with the hardware architecture than the
> software architecture, including the operating system, or in this
> case the hypervisor. In any case, they excel at moving massive
> amounts of data around. They are not efficient at compute intensive
> loads (that is what supercomputers are for), nor do they do graphics
> efficiently (a more specific compute intensive load that GPUs are
> extremely efficient at).
>
> A Z10 BC machine running z/VM can run 10's or even 100's of copies
> of Linux, all simultaneously
>
> You can do that with a Dell server, given sufficient memory, at a
> fraction of the price. Depending on workload of the guest operating
> systems, will tell which will perform better. Of course, the
> mainframe will win in reliability hands down in any case.
>
> To state "MPE, VM, ZOS, etc. all blow away Linux in terms of
> efficiency and
> the way they use the hardware" is not only unsubstantiated by any
> credible
> tests that I am aware of, but also shows a lack of low level operating
> system knowledge.
>
> Oh, I wouldn't say that. I would say rather that it shows intimated
> knowledge of the platforms.
>
> I can as easily intimate that the moon is made of cheese, but that
> doesn't make it so either.
>
> I make no claims at all to expertise on HP3K's. But I do have a
> rather broad bit of experience on
> IBM Mainframes, Unisys (Sperry) 2200's, a bit on Burroughs, Suns, AS/
> 400's, PDP-11's, a raft of embedded systems using
> Motorola and PowerPC, RS6000s, and a few other systems, including
> the Aegis kernel. And what I would class as
> exposure to a whole bunch of other systems.
>
> So far, I'm not seeing the expertise in general operating system
> theory, nor in specific architecture knowledge. I see some name
> dropping, some intimated expertise, some comparisons of "apples to
> oranges", and a lot of hand waving on your part. What I don't see
> is any evidence backed up by any references, credible or not.
>
> I'm not bragging, just pointing out that I am not a mainframe bigot.
> But facts is facts.
>
> I think you are confused here about what a fact is, and exposure
> doesn't equate to expertise or comprehension.
>
> MPE, VM, and z/OS are written for a single hardware
> architecture families by their manufacturers. VM isn't even an
> operating
> system, rather a hypervisor to run other operating systems, CP/CMS in
> particular.
>
> What a load of marleky! z/Vm (to give it's proper and current name)
> is indeed a full operating system. CMS is nothing more than a shell,
> of which there are plenty others. Yes, it provides a hypervisor to
> run guests - or logins. Those logins can certainly be other
> operating systems - including z/VM itself. However, z/VM was used
> as an interactive timesharing platform since the 1960s.
>
> You are joking, right? IBM's z/VM hypervisor was released October
> of 2000. It was based on concepts that date back to the 1960s, and
> it has always been a hypervisor, not an operating system.
>
> - CMS (Conversational Monitor System) is a light weight single user
> operating system.
> - VM/370 is a reimplementation of CP/CMS, which is an operating
> system and which was released in August of 1972.
> - z/VM is a hypervisor (by IBM's own description - http://www.vm.ibm.com/)
> and is based on CONCEPTS going back to the 1960s, but introduced in
> October of 2000 (thought it needed repeating).
> - z/OS is IBM's current flagship operating system
>
> There is a whole "VM" family of products, VM-CP being the hypervisor
> and VM-CMS being the operating system part. A bit confusing to
> someone with extremely little firsthand knowledge of IBM mainframes,
> but I would think an expert like yourself would have those "little"
> details down pat.
>
> For all the normal tasks, including word procesing, e-mail,
> spreadsheets, printing, etc. PROFS was a very standard way to do it.
>
> So what does that have to do with operating system efficiency?
>
> Both MPE and z/OS do not have GUIs and have very limited driver
> support. When you strip away all of the GUIs and myriad device
> drivers
> unneeded for any sized server from Linux, and then compile
> optimizing for a
> particular CPU, you have a very lean-and-mean operating system.
>
>
> No - what you really have is psuedo PDP-11 Macro assembler that is
> converted to the native assembly language for the target platform,
> with a whale of a lot of overhead.
>
> How in the world do equate an assembler and native assembly language
> to an operating system? And what the heck does a PDP-11 have to do
> with anything in this discussion?
>
> First, Unix was written to be rather portable. Linux far more so.
> Efficiently is almost always sacrificed to portability in Linux.
> What makes Linux appear efficient is that it is running on really
> fast hardware - link Intel - and the hardware itself is being drive
> very inefficiently. What is the average utilization of the processor
> on even a heavily used Linux system? (Hint, it is why VMWARE is
> making inroads in the data centers.)
>
> Hint: You don't need VMWare if you don't run MS Windows servers.
>
> Linux will run on very anemic hardware like cheap routers or an
> IPAQ. What part of that statement do you not understand?
>
> The local computer recycler sells desktop computers with a Linux
> distribution installed for Internet , home, and school use that runs
> well on hardware that XP can't be loaded on.
>
> Second, when you do strip it down to the bare bones, it isn't very
> useful. Great for running a phone perhaps, but not for handing
> massive data center loads. (And indeed, it turns out Linux does
> drive phone switches very nicely, but then, so did Unix. ESS systems
> you know... )
>
> A stripped down Linux makes all sorts of nifty servers. To run a
> phone system requires that appropriate packages be applied to a
> certified kernel. I don't know of any Unix system used to run a
> single phone, but Linux on desktop hardware with GUI and Ekiga
> installed does a decent job.
>
>
> Let me put it another way, I love the OS on 3Ks - it looks a LOT
> like Burroughs MCP, which I very much admire.
> I think when we get a decent emulator out here, or have the
> capability to port MPE/ix to a current platform, that it has a real
> place in the current OS pantheon, and will be very popular indeed.
> (Well, with a little marketing that is...)
>
> If you squint your eyes really tightly, an HP's MPE may look like
> Burroughs' MCP, but only if your eyes are glazed over. ;)
>
> I run Linux on my mainframe, and do some absolutely knock-you-socks-
> off amazing things with it.
>
> Like what?
>
> But efficient is a relative term, and relatively speaking, Linux is
> anything but efficient. Indeed, I spend hours each month teaching it
> how to use the machine a bit more efficiently.
>
> You are teaching it? Last I looked, Linux didn't have any
> artificial intelligence included.
>
> Not that I am complaining mind you, Linux is amazing. But how fast the
> hardware is is knock-your-socks-off
> amazing. :)
>
> So, why don't you run something more efficient on your "knock-your-
> socks-off" hardware? There was a time that the BSD TCP/IP stack was
> much superior, then it wasn't and never got the lead back. There
> was a time that Windows was tuned to serve high volumes of web pages
> on a multiprocessor box (at a bandwidth exceeding all common
> networking components), and then in less than 2 months time, it lost
> and lost big time, never again to challenge Apache running on Linux
> for speed and efficiency.
>
> So, what are you comparing Linux to on your hardware that shows
> Linux to be inefficient?
>
> Linux does not need fast hardware to run and run well. Most home
> wireless
> routers and modems (DSL and cable) run Linux on very anemic
> hardware. Yet,
> Linux is the choice to run the very fastest supercomputer in the
> world,
> Roadrunner (http://www.top500.org/system/9707), an IBM machine, yet
> IBM uses
> Linux over their own operating systems (granted, IBM operating
> systems are
> written for and optimized for mainframe architecture, not
> supercomputer
> architecture). IBM mainframes also run a considerable amount of
> Linux (
> http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/z/os/linux/ and http://tinyurl.com/b2kpeq)
> .
>
>
> Supercomputing is *not* a mainframe thing; high volume transactional
> processing *is*. Big databases *are*.
> Really intensive I/O, *is*.
>
> In case you hadn't noticed, Oracle knows a little something about
> databases, especially large high transaction ones and data
> warehouses. In 1998, IIRC, they discovered on any particular
> hardware, Linux outperformed any other operating system, and began
> converting not only their developer workstations and servers over to
> Linux, but also all of their business systems. Oracle is now
> developed on Linux and then ported to other operating systems.
>
> If Linux doesn't run efficiently on any architecture, you can blame
> the
> person installing it, not the Linux kernel, nor operating system built
> around it.
>
>
> Actually, you can blame the Linux kernel. Just as a *simple*
> example, try having the kernel
> automatically limit CPU to a runaway process --- without a kernel
> panic I mean.
> Ain't there. Not even in SuSE 11.
>
> Define a "runaway process". How does it differ from one that is a
> resource hog that is running efficiently? Do you not know how to
> limit a process's CPU priority on Linux? I have had processes that
> couldn't be killed on MPE, but so far, never on Linux.
>
> I used to get kernel panics (core dumps) once in awhile back in the
> '90s, but can't remember the last. Maybe that is because I only use
> stable kernels to do work on, maybe its the Linux distributions I
> use. Whatever reason, it just works.
>
> I don't know why I bother anymore.
>
>
> I'm not sure why either. You jumped all over me like white on rice.
> Who has been using you for a punching bag lately?
> You do have some points.
>
> Spirited Discussion is fun. The way you jumped me ain't.
>
> Sorry, I was cleaning out my inbox when I came across this little
> gem marked for reply, lost in the clutter, when my BS meter started
> blaring in my head. Being the Linux bigot that I am, I just
> couldn't let it go. Knowing little if anything about IBM mainframe
> particulars (nor really caring to), but armed with an Internet
> connection, a little common sense, and an uncommon understanding of
> computers, I dove into the steaming pile with the fervor of a TV
> evangelical preacher.
>
> One of the "grand old men" of the 3000 world once told me a few
> years back that the window of opportunity to save MPE and the HP3000
> closed in 2001, and there wasn't currently the financial nor
> technical resources available, and were willing, to save it since
> then.
>
> Cheers, just "blowing in the wind", Peter
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